The Cutting Room By Louise Welsh
Paperback published by Canongate 2022
ISBN 9781838850906
When Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who converted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.
MY REVIEW
I absolutely loved reading The Cutting Room, it happens to be my favourite book by Louise Welsh. Rilke an auctioneer, is in Hyndland, Glasgow, where he comes across some extremely erotic photographs, inside a buff coloured thick paper document type envelope. pornographic photographs were last thing he ever thought of finding. As Rilke is looking around he also finds the photographer who took these photographs also kept erotic fiction books. Now Rilke wants to know more about the photographer, who took these pornographic photographs. To keep these erotic photographs safe Rilke hides them secretly, beneath his floorboards. This book is deeply charged with sexual references about nude photography but it has carefully been written in a way that makes you want to know more about the photographer too.
Extract from page 21.
I kept them there, a taunt reminder, and slid the photographs into my hand.
Mr Mckindless is wearing a bow tie. His hair has some sort of Brylcreemed bounce, it lies damp and plastered across his forehead. His attention is focused on the young girl in his arms. She is pretty, pale faced and lipsticked. Her head was thrown backwards in his embrace, her dark curls, ringlets almost, tumbling away from her face. She is naked except for suspenders and stockings, and seems almost asleep. Mr McKindless looks as if he is talking, trying to arouse her. Still she gazes, sleepy and smiling, not at him but towards the man who is entering her. The second man is half out of frame, a torso of chest and arms and erect cock, his right hand pointing towards his member, his left hip like some music- Hall queer. A second girl, dressed like the other, sprawls carelessly to his right her cunt revealed. She lies watching McKindless and his companion, her left leg under the other’s left arm. She looks bored. I have seen factory girls look that way towards the end of their shift.
The background was anonymous, a black and white stripe of wallpaper, a door frame, but I guessed they were in Paris.
About author Louise Welsh
Louise Welsh is an award-winning author of eight novels. The Cutting Room, her debut novel, won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award and the Saltire First Book of The Year Award. In 2018, she was named the Most Inspiring Saltire First Book Award winner by public vote. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.
Website
http://www.louisewelsh.com/index.html
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